baybeasts

It’s easier to post in memes. (Even easier to just play scrabble on Facebook).

This is actually a LiveJournal meme but I haven’t posted to my LJ for a long time, so I’d rather do it here.

Comment and (if you want) I’ll give you a letter. In your journal, list 10 of your favourite songs that begin with that letter.

Az gave me G. In no particular order, lifted pretty much straight from my itunes, we have:

1. God is a Bullet (Concrete Blonde) - memories of year 11 and Pambula Beach where a girl I knew through music camp gave me this song on a 7″ single (I still have it). I love Johnette Napolitano’s voice - so gutsy and passionate, and this song really grabbed me with its anger and sadness. I’ve always been a sucker for a song with big emotions and dominating basslines.

2. Gloria (Patti Smith, Van Morrison and U2) - I have to confess that I first loved this song via U2. But the cool thing is that it was U2 who got me onto Patti Smith (via their cover of this and also their cover of Dancing Barefoot, which I thought I loved until I heard the Patti Smith original and was totally blown away). So this one is really less about the song itself and more about the story. That said, I still have a soft spot in my heart for the young, scruffy, Dublin boys belting out Van Morrison’s classic with passion but not much style - they were always self important but when they were little it was kinda cute.

3. Golden Brown (the Stranglers) - this is actually one of bean’s favourite songs. I must have heard it before we got together - it was certainly familiar - but the passion with which she loves it made me hear it with totally new ears. I love the disconcerting way it is a sweet and loving ode - to heroin, not some random chick.

4. Goodnight Little Arlo (Woody Guthrie) - we knew when we named our son that there was a famous folk singer called Arlo, and that people would incessantly ask us if we had named him after that singer (we didn’t, we just liked the name). But we didn’t know that his dad had written him such a gorgeous song, until a friend emailed me after he was born and told us. Bean’s mum, the musician, listened to it once or twice and identified the chords so I can now play it (badly) on the guitar to little Loey. It’s a very cute song from a very cute album called Songs to Grow on for Mother and Child - much better kid’s music than much of the crap on offer these days.

5. Great Waves (Dirty Three and Cat Power) - I think this might just be my song of 2007. It came via a mixtape from Barbelith, the theme of which was “the end of the world”. This song moves me so deeply - the apocalyptic vivid imagery (”blue blood is floating, the city, its contents, have been ripped out”), expressed in Chan Marshalls’ voice which is somehow disconnected from itself yet hauntingly beautiful, all underpinned by the characteristic texture and wildness of the Dirty Three. I just love it.

6. Glass House (Ani di Franco) - I think we all went through an Ani phase (except bean who thinks she is whiny and annoying). I put this in more for the whole album (Little Plastic Castles) which was released the year I went to Japan (1998) and had one of the best years of my life - this album (and by corollary this song) was one of the soundtrack albums for that year.

7. Galactic - Battlestar Galactica theme 2004 - when we first started watching Battlestar Galactica (which ranks as one of my favourite TV shows ever), I loved the show, but I was unconvinced by the opening theme song. Over time though, I have grown to love it passionately, especially the thrilling drums at the end. And now the opening bars send a chill of excitement down my spine. God I love this show. (Come to think of it, I had a very similar experience with the theme song for Firefly.)

8. Gone Darker (Electrelane) - most of the cool music that I have loved over the last year or two has come via Az. Ages ago now he asked me if I wanted to come to this gig with him - I had no idea who Electrelane were but I was really keen to listen to some live music and to hang out with him so I pretended I did so that he wouldn’t think I was totally uncool or that the ticket would be wasted. They blew my socks off. I remember this track from the gig so well…the sample of the train and the moaning of her saxophone - I remember standing there just totally caught up in this soundscape that these four stunning women created from nothing. They are now one of my favourite bands.

9. Goodbye Stranger (Supertramp) - actually this, again, is a stand-in for Supertramp more generally (synecdoche!). When I was a kid, my mum married a man 9 years younger than her, and he brought with him a whole lot of 70s music - Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, Donovan, Simon and Garfunkel, and Supertramp. This music became the soundtrack of my primary school years, mixed up with my own forays into pop music (see next song). Supertramp have a special place because listening to them was the first time I realised that music could make you feel something - the song Rudy moved my little ten year old heart to tears. I still love all this music, even though that man is long gone from my life, and it has resurfaced particularly as a fruitful source of songs to sing Loey as part of our ever-expanding repertoire of ways to help him fall asleep.

10. Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (Cyndi Lauper) - She’s So Unusual was the very first album I bought with my very own money. Actually it wasn’t with money, it was with a gift voucher that I got for Christmas from my friend-down-the-back, Alexis. Which little girl didn’t love Cyndi Lauper? She was so fun and exciting and crazy and squeaky. I still love this album, and this song is a total classic of the 80s for me.

Hey, that was fun!